House of Stairs

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This young adult novel (1974) reflects Cold War paranoia: apprehension that the government will brainwash unwilling subjects into perfectly controllable weapons of war. But overall it was strong and surprised me with a pretty overt and sympathetic portrayal of gay characters (for a book published in the seventies) and a really wild conclusion. Five sixteen year-old orphans - two boys, three girls - are put into a giant room, with no visible walls, ceiling or floor. All dynamics changes and the action moves up the stairs to the ultimate denouement in this extremely atmospheric tragedy of characters.

Peter, Lola, Blossom, Abigail and Oliver are our protagonists and they all clearly differ from one another with the five of them presenting a nice range of reactions and interactions to each other and the situation around them. I was going to give this four stars, but after finishing it I realised that it is the kind of book I will probably read again (and again?Escher merged his impeccable talent for drawing with his interest in mathematics to create truly original work, in a time when abstract art was the norm.

The menace is felt as Bell climbs the stairs to her room on the top floor, the 104th step creaking as she does so and enters the room, the room with the dangerous window that came down to no more than six inches or so from the floor (page 121). This is an incredibly creative and original science fiction tale that chronicles the events that take place when five teen-aged orphans are behaviorally trained to respond to a machine. She was a postmodernist author, representing the Labour Party in the Britain's House of Lords, and championed the legislation to ban female mutilation from Britain's society.She lived in a “real” house, while the others lived in huge mega-skyscrapers and dined on artificial food.

I remember not being able to put it down, and upon revisiting it, it is still just as fascinating to me. Part Two covers chapters 11—20 and the epilogue, and the narrative in this half gracefully glides between different characters within chapters, and the chapter breaks instead flick between two different groups as the teenagers divide. For a while, Peter thinks that Oliver is his old friend, Jasper, and subsequently Peter is devoted to Oliver.Love Makes You Evil: Though Abigail starts out as a kind, sweet person, her attraction to Oliver gives him power over her, and ends up just as warped as the others at the end of the novel. The past and present flow into each other, and throughout her narratives Vine traces both a crime’s roots and its subsequent ramifications.

Wi Ding, meanwhile, broke through the international film stage with his short film “Respire,” which bowed at Cannes’ Critics Week in 2005 and won Best Fantasy Short Film at Sitges festival. The book is really well written- I think my YA nephew could read it and not feel preached at or lost- and it stands up well in todays more modern world. The narrator is trying to unravel her own past, her own complicity, her own history, and understand her own damaged life. This has relevance today, when we are debating the ethics of torture - is it a necessary evil that we must tolerate if our society is to survive, or is it an offense against our humanity?Not only is Blossom the most vicious character - her meanness seems to be underlined, and increased, by her size.